[101] This tendency to alteration grew upon him perhaps to excess in his later years. His taste, always fastidious, became morbidly sensitive; he could not tolerate the slightest appearance of defect in proportion or detail. The inevitable effect was not only great waste of labour and money, but occasionally a danger of losing the original harmony of a design in the multiplicity of alterations. But it was only an exaggeration of the one true secret of success and perfection—“the capacity of taking infinite pains.”
[102] Thus, for example, the panels on the river front contain the coats of arms of all the sovereigns of England, from William I. to Victoria; the niches on the flanks contain statues of the Saxon kings and queens; the reigning family is exalted in the niches of the Victoria tower, &c.
[103] I do not think it necessary to give a detailed description of the design and decoration of the building. For this I would refer to the illustrations of the New Palace of Westminster by E. N. Holmes, Esq. (Warrington), to the official Handbook to the New Palace of Westminster, and to a paper read before the Institute of British Architects, on February 1st, 1858, by E. M. Barry, Esq., A.R.A.
[104] At the foot of this staircase stands the statue of the architect, in a position sufficiently public, but not very central or commanding.
[105] For almost the whole of this chapter I am indebted to Mr. Wolfe. He alone aided Sir Charles by encouragement and help, by suggestion and criticism, in the labour of the first conception of the design, and the greater labour of its subsequent development.
[106] He did not regard even Clapham Church as hopeless, as a sketch for a chancel made in his Prayer-book before service can testify. But such sketches were sometimes dangerously artistic, and excited hopes which it was hard to realize.
[107] Thus in the competition for the New Palace at Westminster it was thought highly liberal to offer four premiums of 500l. each. In the competition (now going on) for the new Law Courts, each of the selected competitors, some twelve in number, receives 800l.
[108] It is strange that great builders, who are encircling our chief towns with lines of “villa residences” generally vile in point of architecture, so seldom take the trouble to secure from some good architect a series of designs (to be carried out by themselves), both for the general laying out of a district, and for individual houses. The cost to them, and therefore the increase of rent to tenants, would be trifling, where the work was on a large scale; the gain to the public would be incalculable.
[109] In speaking of this as an advantage, it was, of course, conceived that some provision should be made for the hundreds of people dispossessed. Sir Charles surveyed the district, not without considerable difficulty, and he found that inordinate profits were made out of the misery of its crowded and filthy dens.
[110] At the present time (1866) the site is being cleared of the buildings upon it at a cost roughly estimated at 1,250,000l.; and designs are being prepared in competition by a limited number of architects for a “Palace of Justice” on a scale of unprecedented magnificence.